Divinity of Jesus

I do not read Hebrew. But I can check more than one version and also Strong's Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew / Chaldee Dictionary.I think you are making an unwarranted assumption that the translator of the RcV worked from Latin rather than Hebrew.But I will check this out with a few of the English translations. For instance the 1901 American Standard has a reputation for being a "wooden" translation. Among translators that means it tends to sacrifice well sounding English for the sake of accuracy to the original language expressions and words.It also uses "possessed" in Proverbs 8:22.J.N. Darby's New Translation also has "possessed" in Prov. 8:22.The King James also reads "possessed" there.Rothram's Emphasized has "constituted ".The New King James also reads "possessed".The New American Standard has "possessed".Young's Literal Translation has "possessed".The World English has "possessed"The Geneva Study Bible has "possessed".To be fair I see this note which you would probably like: But I see enough English translations out there with "possessed" to be lead to believe that it must be an acceptable translation of the Hebrew.At any rate there is no way around the utterances that no God was formed before or after Jehovah. I think the matter is for the most part, settled there in Isaiah.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

In the Jewish culture of those days, saying 'Son of God' or 'of the very nature of God' means exactly the same thing.You can't come along, two thousands years later, and say: 'Well since this expression is unknown in our culture today, then Jesus is not claiming to be God but only God's son ...' You have to read the Bible from the position of a reader of the time, which knew what this expression really meant.

possessed in english means :
"To have as a quality, characteristic, or other attribute" (free online dictionary)created in english means :
"To cause to exist; bring into being." dictionary.comThey are completely different meanings, im sure you can see that. If the hebrew writers wanted to imply that God 'possessed' and not 'created' why didnt they use a word that meant 'possessed'?Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

AMEN! This is what cults do. They change the definition of what words means in the Bible, hoping that unbelievers will not know the difference. Then unbelievers claim that Christians are divided on too many issues for them to consider what the Bible says to be true.The Bible that we have today and the one proclaimed by the writers of the Bible all proclaim the Jesus is Lord God. Those who do not believe this and still think they are Christians are either false Christians or belong to cults such as Jehovah Witnesses.

I'd actually say that this charge should be laid at the feet of people who take the Bible at face value.Until these people try reading the Bible without being in the altered state of consciusness caused by the self-induced psychological condition refered to as the 'Holy Spirit' they will never understand the Bible and will continue to think it is some supernatural product rather than what it really is, a collection of ancient mythologies, inaccurate histories, contradictions, revisions, all mingled in to Christian propaganda.Anyone who cannot see this in the Bible is not reading it properly.

ok John10:10

Remember that John 10:10 is the expert on non-Christians, since he is the most obvious example of a non-Christian that has ever graced this site.

Peg,A few matters I have no yet addressed with you: There no arguement that Jesus spoke for God. But there is more than that. Jesus spoke not only "for" God, Jesus spoke God. Jesus still speaks God. Jesus spoke God into people.When He speaks God works:"Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works" (John 14:10)As this God/Man speaks the Father works His works. His words are spirit and are life. He speaks God into people. When we receive His words we receive divine life. And this life is God Himself dispensed into man.If as you read the words of Christ, you do not argue and rationalize them away according to Russell's heresy, but pray "Amen, Lord Jesus. I receive Your words," you will receive life. And this life is the life of God.God has spoken to us "in the Son" (Hebrews 1:1) The entire life of the Son is God's speaking.It is an improvement from thinking of Jesus as an angelic dictaphone repeating God's words to understanding that His whole being is the speaking of God. This is a speaking of God into man as divine life.John calls Him "the Word of life". They handled this Word, touched this Word, beheld this Word (1 John 1:1-3).I want you to understand that to "give life" in the New Testament really means to give a Person. This Person is the Triune God. To give life in the New Testament means to give to people an intimate personal relationship.To give life is not merely to give doctrinal understanding. To give life is not merely to give correct objective information. The giving of the ZOE - divine life to man is the giving of God to man.This life embodied in the Word of life, John says, "was with the Father". And this divine life is the eternal life.Nothing is more subjective to a person than the life of that person. And fallen man's major problem is that he is "alienated [or estrasnged] from the life of God" (Eph. 4:18).He is not merely alienated from the correct knowledge ABOUT God. He is not merely alienated from the accurate objective information about Who God is. He is alienated from God's own life. He is alienated from God Himself personaly. To receive this Word of life is to receive the life of God ending this alienation deep in man's inner being.It is to plant this life into man that it may grow, and as you pointed out, swallow him up. That would be life swallowing up eventually man's whole being - spirit and soul and body.Jesus Christ is the living Word of God. To receive Him makes part of our being God because God is then mingled with our innermost being."He who is JOINED to the Lord is one spirit" 1 Cor. 6:17)Do not stagger at the promise of the New Testament. We are to receivee Christ and receive the Word of life, the life of God. This JOINS us to the Lord. This firmly ataches us unto the anointed one. This enables a man to abide in Christ as the branch abides in the vine. Now though He is doing more than leading a people through a desert. He is entering into thier being as "a life giving Spirit" to impart the Person of God into man."In Him was life, and the life was the light of men."Once receiving Christ we are enlightened within that we are one with God the Person intimately, personally. It is not just that we now have correct information about a God who is far off and far above. It is to have enlightenment that God now lives in us.We have been use to living by the old Adamic life. It is not easy to begin to learn to live by another life. But having receive this life which is mingled into man's innermost being, we must nourish it so that it may grow.Receiving the Person of Jesus is just the beginning. It is not the end. Receiving Jesus will give us the indistructible assurance that we are redeemed by God and that we have eternal life. But this is the beginning. We have to grow in life and allow that Person to spread into all of our soul.This is none other than the mingling of one Person with another. This is merging Jesus with our own being. "[T]he last Adam became a life giving Spirit" means that Christ became a God giving, a Person giving, and intimate personal relationship giving Spirit.God absolutely gives Himself to man in Christ as the Holy Spirit.So the Trinity of what God IS cannot be separated from what God DOES. Trinity is for God manifesting God and then conveying God into man. If we do not receive this dispensing of God into us, we may be like the Jews who had correct information about God in the OT. Or we may be like the Moslem who has at least some kind of correct information about God at least being a great Creator. Or we may be in a degraded Christianity which only has correct data about a God who loved us and sent His Son to die for us.But the goal is the dispensing of God into man. As many as "RECEIVED" Him was born of God. Birth is not the final purpose. Birth is the initiation and the beginning. Birth is not that we may receive a ticket to a happy place. Birth of children of God is that God may grow int them to reproduce the image of Christ in them for a corporate expression of God in man - church and ultimately the New Jerusalem.She eventually matches Christ to be His Bride and His Wife. God's eternal purpose is to be mingled with man.____You should not think lightly of the phrase "life in His name". That really means life in His Person. That really means life in the whole sphere and realm of His Person, being IN a Person - in God as life. And it is being IN JESUS 1,000,000 %.Any teaching discouraging you from being IN Jesus, in His resurreced and living Person and Presence is not of God. God is always trying to bring us into the realm of His living Person.It is no joke that we have said to let Jesus into your heart. This is not sentimental talk. It means that Jesus as the life giving Spirit can enter into you. You can be joined to the Lord deep in your innermost being.This is what we must not resist. And it is to this man should open his heart to RECEIVE this wonderful and unusual Person of Jesus Christ."The Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith" (Eph. 3:17)This saying of Paul's is not sentimental. It is actual in the spiritual realm. One Person can make an abode within another person that the two are comfortably united, mingled, blended, interwoven into one. It is like the hand fitting into the glove.What was missing has come. Where we were incomplete the completion has come.That you may have life in His name means that you may have JESUS. That is what it means. I say again to "have life in His name"
is nothing less than to have God within.Don't stagger at this. Recall Christ's words:"I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.

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Yet a little while and the world beholds Me no longer, but you behold Me; because I live, you also shall live.

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In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." (John 14:18-20)The natural mind will say "But we will live without Jesus". But know that God does not count that living without Himself within man as true living. That man is spiritually dead and needs to be reborn."Because I live, you also shall live." That is because of His resurrection we who receive Him into our hearts can have divine life. We can be regenerated through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead:"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3)We recieve the word of life and are reborn within:"Having been regenerated not of curruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God." (1 Peter 1:23)When we receive this resurrected Jesus who is today "a life giving Spirit" (in addition to Him being at the right hand of God in heaven), we know that He is in the Father and we in Him and He in us.We become, through regeneration "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4)This is not merely to be SPECTATORS of the divine nature.
This is not merely to be ADMIRERS of the divine nature.
This is not merely to be WORSHIPPERS of the divine nature.
This is not merely to be OBSERVERS of the divine nature.This is not to simply be far below, looking up and holding in reverance the divine nature which FAR FAR above us in Heaven.This is to be participants of that divine nature. We receive Him and are given authority through a spiritual BIRTH to become children of God - partakers of the divine nature. God can do this to the God/man Christ. And in a future post I will prove that to you from the Old Testament. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

99% of historic Christianity that has always believed that Jesus is Lord God get to tell the other 1% that do not believe that Jesus is Lord God what is and what is not a cult. Jehovah Witnesses who are a Christian cult would like it to be otherwise, but that does not change their major beliefs concerning the Lord Jesus one iota.I am only aware of only one Christian cult in recent years that has moved from being a Christian cult to genuine Christian faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That Christian cult was Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God.When Armstrong died in 1986, Joseph W. Tkach, Sr., assumed the title of "Pastor General" of the WCG. Tkach died in September, 1995, at the age of 68. He was succeeded by his son, Joseph Tkach, Jr. Since the 1986 leadership change, observers of the cult's affairs can list some 40 changes in WCG's doctrines, as well as a withdrawal from circulation of a number of Armstrong's written works. The leadership of the WCG has issued a new statement of faith which appears to accept traditional Bible doctrine in many areas. The major changes are toward a more orthodox position on the Trinity and salvation through the grace of God alone and not through good deeds.If/when you see the Jehovah Witnesses do the same, then and only then will the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ consider JW's NOT to be a Christian cult.

You do realize that the divinity of Jesus has historically been a major point of dispute among early Christians?

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cult
  /kʌlt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kuhlt] Show IPA
Use cult in a Sentence
—noun
1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.
2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.
3. the object of such devotion.
4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
5. Sociology. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.
6. a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.
7. the members of such a religion or sect.
8. any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.

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I fail to see any any definition of the word "cult" that would fit Jehovah's Witnesses but not fit other Christian denominations. Arguably, several Charismatic evangelical groups would far better qualify, with heir doctrines of separation from the world, following of charismatic leaders, extremist end-times Christian-supremacist views, etc.Perhaps you could illuminate us, since you seem to be the sole arbiter of whose beliefs get to be valid and whose are not. How specifically do JW's count as a cult, but your own denomination does not?

I have given you and others Scriptural reasons from the Bible why Jehovah Witnesses are a Christian cult. Christian cults deny the Deity of Jesus who now sits at the right hand of God the Father as Lord (Acts 2:33-36). If you would repent of your sins according to Acts 2:38, then you would not be defending a Christian cult. Edited by John 10:10, : added "In Christ Alone" song

No, you haven't. You've simply given the scriptural interpretations on which you disagree with JWs, but we already knew that you don't agree.You;ve asserted that they're a cult, however, and that's a lot different from saying "they don't interpret this text the same way I do."I've given you the definition of a cult. How, specifically, do JW's count as a cult, while your specific denomination does not? That's a rather absurd statement.From Wikipedia:

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The Christological positions known as Arianism and Ebionitism - groups that in one manner or another argued that Jesus was an ordinary mortal - and other groups, in particular those, such as Gnosticism, that adhered to the idea that Christ was, if anything, a completely supernatural being, a view known as docetism[3]. By the fourth century tensions within the Church between Christological positions that stressed the humanity of Jesus and Christological positions that stressed the divinity of Jesus lead to several wide schisms in the church. The groups still in imperial favour produced councils in the fourth and fifth-century that affirmed that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human, making this part of their orthodox Christian declaration/creed[1][2]; other groups, also calling themselves orthodox, opposed the conclusions of these councils.

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Disputes over whether Jesus was divine, fully human, partially divine and partially human, fully human and then divine after his baptism, etc raged for the first few centuries of Christianity.Let's be very clear here. JW's are no more a cult than any other Christian denomination, and meet the definition less well than some. Christianity itself at the beginning would have qualified perfectly as a Jewish cult - a small group teaching what was considered wildly heretical dogma centered around an extremely charismatic individual who claimed to be able to perform miracles.It sounds exactly like David Koresh, back in Waco, Texas - another cult leader.JWs may not agree with you on some points of dogma, John, but that hardly makes them a cult. Mormons disagree with you on many more points of dogma. How about Catholics? Do you agree with their near-deification of Mary or the saints? The infallibility of the human Pope?The dividing line between a cult and a religion, John, is a combination of popularity and extremism. The JWs are just as large a group as many other Christian denominations, and they aren't any more on the fringe than Christian Scientists (not to be confused with scientists who happen to be Christian) or Seventh Day Adventists - less so, I would even say.So far, you've focused on making ad hominem attacks against Peg simply because she's a JW; others have done more to argue the points of scripture than you have, and nothing I've seen from you has been convincing. In fact, you've ignored my direct questions, as well. Instead, you like to make silly statements like this: I'm defending JWs only against the absurd notion that you, John, get to decide who is a cult and who is not (regardless of the actual definition of the word), and that you alone get to decide what is a proper interpretation of the Bible.Spouting Biblical passages in some bizarre attempt to convert me does nothing to establish your point, John. This board is not a place for evangelizing - it's a place for debating. I;m sure you've managed to win gullible idiots - er, souls for Christ by repeating various "repent!" Bible passages; it takes a bit more than that to work on me. Instead, perhaps you should stick to addressing people's actual arguments, and rebutting them with evidence and argument of your own. From that perspective, John, your signal to noise ration is abominably low.

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You do realize that the divinity of Jesus has historically been a major point of dispute among early Christians?

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It was not in the ''eye-witness'' christians, who had been of the generations who had seen Jesus.The dispute came by when Gnosticism came along in the 2nd and 3rd generationsa afterwards. This arrival of gnosticism (which is similar in someways to the NewAge movement nowadays) was one of the reasons why John wrote his letters near the end of his life.These disputes were settled once and for all (well, supposedly) only during the councils in the years following the death of ConstantineEdited by slevesque, : No reason given.

It appears to me that such disputes were not settled very well, as there are several unusual denominations that grew out of the 'great awakening' in the US in the 1830's. Each has the mark of stating that the NT needed a supplement from a new prophet to be fully appreciated and understood.The most obvious is of course from Joseph Smith in creating Mormonism, but one also has the Seventh-Day Adventists, who thrived on the failure of prophecies concerning the second coming. We also have the Southern Baptists, who split off due to their support of slavery in 1845. Perhaps their prophet was John C. Calhoun.After the Civil War, we get the infallibles like Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science fame, or Ellen G. White of the 7ths. The latter, after being kicked in the head by a horse and having subsequent seizures, dreamed of a literal 7 day creation. Now all 7ths have to kowtow to the party line in opposing science.Nowadays we have televangelists who blame homosexuals for hurricanes, and democrats for earthquakes. And L. Ron Hubbard creating a fake religion to win a $1000 bet.Manson, Jim Jones, and Koresh are the ultimate goal of those who sold their soul, just like the child murdering suicide bombers of a corrupted Islam.JWs are no more or no less than another weird, latter day prophet version of Christianity. At least they don't suicide bomb schoolchildren, collect firearms for any imagined immanent second coming, or even wake you up on Saturday at 8am anymore.They are just stuck with the likes of Peg as a spokesperson.

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

Yeah well I agree that the normal process of such a movement as christianity is that it will break up in an almost infinite amount of different branches.It happened in the early church after just a few generations from Jesus Christ, and its still happening today.